Posted
by
Soulskillon Monday August 08, 2011 @01:42PM
from the when-in-doubt-double-down dept.

theodp writes "Citing the widespread practice of sharing passwords for expediency's sake, Cisco's Chief Security Officer proclaimed in 2007 that people 'need to be held accountable for their risk-taking,' noting that CEO John Chambers drives home the point that 'information security is everybody's responsibility' at Cisco. But instead of accepting responsibility after a Cisco employee provided his ID and password to ex-Cisco engineer Peter Alfred-Adekeye, the networking giant sic'ed the Feds on Adekeye, who was slapped with a five-count indictment by a Federal grand jury last week. Adekeye's crime, according to the Court filing, was using the login credentials the Cisco employee provided him with 'in excess of the specific use granted by the Cisco employee.' For his five downloads of different versions of Cisco IOS — four of which were launched within a 15-minute period in 2006 — the government is seeking a penalty of 5 years imprisonment for Adekeye, a $250K fine, and 3 years supervised release. It's the latest salvo fired in the war Cisco and US prosecutors have waged against Adekeye since he filed an antitrust suit against Cisco in December 2008."

That's logic and reasoning. We'll have none of that and neither will Cisco.

It is plain for all who have been following this story that "Cisco" (or more likely, one or a few people within Cisco) really have it in for this guy who is an ex-employee (with much inside knowledge) and has sued the company for its actions and policies.

When the employee [who in my opinion, effectively represents the company] gave credentials to Adekeye for the purpose of access to download "whatever" then that is not unauthorized access. I find it easy to believe a grand jury delivered an indictment, however -- they are just juries and the prosecution always does its level best to pick the least brilliant people they can find to parrot the prosecution's position.

Also, I don't believe Adekeye will be stupid enough to enter the US after all the crap he has gone through so far because of Cisco. And even if he did come to the US to win his case and his defense, no one at Cisco will be held accountable for this ridiculous set of charges and no one at the DoJ will be either. It's beyond ridiculous and yet they are persuing this with a completely straight face.

Normally I would, but Cisco has been proven to be complicit in lying and subterfuge in this case.

Check out the note above about what they did in Canada. They fed a boatload of lies to the DoJ which were then parroted to the Canadians to get him extradited here. The Canadian judge was PISSED when this was found out.

It was seriously evil and twisted. How's this: He is a British citizen traveling on a valid British passport. He sues Cisco. He lives in Switzerland and can't get back into the US legally until he resolves some immigration issues, which he has documentation he's been actively trying to do. So he can't come to the US to make a deposition in the case. Cisco doesn't want to go to Switzerland, so they arrange for Canada. Cisco/DoJ has him arrested and held for extradition in the middle of the deposition.

Here's a fun lie: The justification for this was that he refused to come into the US, so he had to be nabbed in Canada. But there is documentation showing he had been continually trying to come back to the US to run his company. A quick check with DHS would have shown the DoJ that Cisco was lying, but they didn't even bother. The judge in the antitrust case knew about the situation and had approved the Canadian deposition.

If they wanted him that badly, they could have just granted the visa, he would have entered the US, and he could have been arrested.

He's Nigerian by birth, but he had been a British citizen for years, and a successful executive with IBM, AT&T and then Cisco. Cisco brought him to the US on his British passport. Cisco then fed the DoJ a big story about this shady Nigerian who could flee at any moment if not nabbed in Canada and held there. Without checking, the DoJ passed this false story onto the Canadians.

I've read the Canadian court decision. It is downright scary what happened, Cisco colluding with the DoJ and lying to a sovereign country's courts in order to strongarm a person into giving up his antitrust suit.